Exhibitions

100 years of continuities 100 years of change

On the tracks of Emil Torday in the Congo 6/Feb/2010 - 4/Mar/2010
It behooves us to piously preserve the memory of the man who worked so hard and devoted so many years of labor, who wrote, preached, and acted on behalf of the good name of Hungarian science, who sacrificed so much for his country in order to win friends for Hungary around the globe.

 

Between 1900 and 1909 Emil Torday (1885-1931), the Hungarian Africa researcher, carried out three expeditions to the Congo River basin. In the summer of 2009, on the one hundredth anniversary of his last journey, a Hungarian expedition traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to retrace part of Torday's itinerary. The expedition was successful in reaching the sites where and the ethnic groups among whom Torday executed his most significant research and collecting of art and artifacts.

The expedition was documented by Attila Lóránt as photographer and Dávid Reisinger as cinematographer. Ildikó Szilasi, the leader of the expedition, carried out anthropological observations and collected artifacts in collaboration with the Congolese anthropologist Charles Ngwabwanyi Kunda. The contents of this exhibition include some of the writings of Torday and photos taken by Torday or his fellow-travelers at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the photographs, videos, documents and objects assembled during the expedition in the summer of 2009. The aim of the exhibition is to acquaint the public with the opus and achievements of Torday. Furthermore to show the public the cultural processes and social phenomena taking place in the Congo nowadays.

 

 

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